Page 21 of Lourdes & the Mafia
It’s when he opens his mouth and repeats the words I’ve dreamt of since the first moment he said them, a whisper that only I can hear.“Aman cara.”
I never did look those words up, scared to find out what they really mean, and they fill me with just as much curiosity now as they did when he first said them.
His voice now though is filled with a dark promise that curls around me like phantom hands.
“La vidente,” he whispers, louder now.
And then he turns away from me to look back at the other two. As if I’m not still staring at him slack-jawed. As if those words hadn’t resonated through my body.
La vidente.
The seer.
“What is going on?” he asks in that refined way of his.
Lorenzo steps forward, clapping the newcomer on the back. The three are familiar with each other, that much is evident. “Kane dropped her off a few hours ago,” he explains.
The newcomer turns sharply to the suit—Kane. He immediately replies, and it makes me think that this newcomer is their leader and they both defer to him. It’s not surprising. The power that pulses from him seems astronomical. “She was stabbed. Came into Sinful and fainted.”
The newcomer snaps his attention back to me, his gaze narrowing over my body, stopping for a lingering moment on my nipples.
Joder.
I cross my arms over my chest, and he looks up at me once again. “What happened to you?”
My body trembles. There’s power in his words, and he says them like he’s commanding an explanation to rip from my lips.
I keep them pressed tightly closed. Heat rises over my body as I recall every moment before I ended up in Sinful.
Yessi.
The vision.
The blade.
And Naomi’s voice tears through it all.
“I told you so.”
The embarrassment that consumes me is suffocating, causing me to turn my face away. I know what comes when I fuck up—and I fuck upa lot.A lecture. Always a lecture. Followed by the sensation of beingstupid,worthless,dependent.
And maybe this time I deserve a lecture for being fucking stupid, but I can’t deal with it right now. Yes, I know I’ll have to face what happened when there might still be Yessi’s dead body at my house at this very moment.
Yet I can’t.
My lower lip trembles and my eyes sting with humiliation. I want to reach up and wipe the tears away, but it will only draw attention to them. These men have seen me at my lowest; I don’t want them to see any more.
There’s a long drawl of silence, and I feel three sets of gazes on me. Waiting. And I can’t turn to look back at them.
Until the newcomer speaks.
“Very well,” he whispers darkly. “You will stay here with us.”
Ramiel
Hershriekisdrownedout by the tornado of smoke and flames. It licks at us from the bottom up, the familiarity of my dark magic swirling to whisk us away from Lorenzo’s suite. His cackled laughter echoes through the wind, their voices sounding far away.
And through the melee, I can only stare at her.
